Where God is not?

Last week, during our school's annual Epiphany West pastoral conference, one of the speakers was Peter Phan, who gave a talk about being religious interreligiously (in fact, that's the title of his 2004 book currently under "review" by the Vatican and causing much "anxiety").

One of the most interesting statements that he made (and which many others, no doubt, have also articulated) is that as a faith community (whether Methodist, Catholic, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Islamic, etc.), we can define where God is, but we can never say definitively where God is not.

Hearing him, I was reminded of an incident that happened several years ago. I was traveling abroad, and it was during some evening in the Spring when a friend of mine, seeing my intention to enter into a temple, told me not to enter into that particular space because God was not and is not and will not be present there.

That kind of certainty takes a lot of courage, I think. I would not be so assured or confident in denying where God does or does not exist, or where God can or cannot be found. God is a greater Mystery than what I am able to comprehend with the limitations of my human understanding, so I do not dare to say for certain where God is not.

Conversations about intercultural and interreligous living inspire me to look for where God is, and, more importantly, allow me to recognize, understand, and welcome when God reveals God's self to me -- whether it be through the kind gesture of an old itinerant merchant in Saigon, or through the smile of a young child I pass by in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, or perhaps a homeless person on Shattuck Street, or perhaps outside a mosque in Malaysia.

That evening, when my friend barred me from entering the temple, I did not respond, was not able to respond. I did not have the language to articulate what I was thinking or feeling or sensing -- I felt like a child grasping through children's vocabulary, and those words were insufficient tools for me to enter into discourse on a deeper level.

Because of our differences, I may not engage in theological conversations, debating why I believe the Creator God exists and can be found in every space and time. For now, though, I can at least say that the space I occupy would be a space where God exists, and, wherever I go, God would be in that place.

Amen?